{"id":11957,"date":"2018-12-10T10:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T15:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theprofessionalhobo.com\/?p=11957"},"modified":"2024-06-18T07:35:34","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T11:35:34","slug":"the-irony-of-expat-life-pros-and-cons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theprofessionalhobo.com\/the-irony-of-expat-life-pros-and-cons\/","title":{"rendered":"THE IRONY OF EXPAT LIFE: Pros and Cons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In my first 12 years of full-time travel, seeing the world with an observational eye (as writers tend to do), I became good at quickly distilling various cultures and behaviours to some core themes. Just take my expat friends in Tokyo, who when I listed my beefs with Japanese culture<\/a>, replied only with \u201cI don’t know how you figured all that out in just two months here\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what I do. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m also very careful not to paint with too broad a brush, and I’ve learned that what I observe in a town or city is rarely representative of the entire country or people. Quite like my home town of Toronto Canada; it actually took me leaving<\/em> Toronto (and eventually, Canada) to understand that Toronto is most certainly not<\/em> Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is this level of perspective that travel affords us on the whole; perspective not only on the places we visit, but on our own backyards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it’s with this cautious caveat that I’d like to make some observations about expat culture: ironies, pros, and cons. While these observations may not be indicative of all expats and expat cultures worldwide, I’ve experienced a good cross-section of expat communities, the following places being just a few:<\/p>\n\n\n\n